Dictionary of Literary Biography on Samuel Arthur Williams

In 1978, at the age of thirty-two, Samm-Art Williams completed Home, a drama which depicts the journey of a young black man from rural Cross Roads, North Carolina, to the North and back, and which espouses a love of the land, folksy philosophies, and a universal longing for home. The play was produced in 1979, won several awards, and was generally greeted with enthusiasm by a wide-ranging audience. It ran for ten months on Broadway and catapulted Williams to a national reputation comparable to that of Lonne Elder for Ceremonies in Dark Old Men (1969) or Charles Gordone for No Place To Be Somebody (1969). The history of black shows on Broadway, as Loften Mitchell points out, has been a hit-and-miss affair, with few shows having very long runs. Notable exceptions are Langston Hughes's Mulatto (1934) and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959). Production of Home made Williams the hottest young black...